Augmentations

Many explorers and mercenaries modify their own bodies with technological or biological gear called augmentations. These are modifications to your body that give you special abilities and bonuses. Once installed, they become a part of your body and generally can’t be affected by abilities that destroy or disable objects or target technological items or creatures. As far as attacks and abilities are concerned, a cybernetic or vat-grown arm is no more (or less) vulnerable than your original biological limb.

System

All augmentations have a system entry indicating the part of the body into which it must be installed. You can’t have more than one augmentation on the same part of your body.

In some cases, such as with augmentations installed in limbs, you can install an augmentation into a single general type of body part, such as
any single one of your feet or hands. In these cases, the augmentation lists the acceptable body parts into which the augmentation can be installed. You can install a single augmentation on each limb of which you have multiples. For example, if you’re a kasatha, you could install a separate augmentation on each of your four hands, as long as each of those augmentations requires only a single hand.

If an augmentation requires multiple limbs for installation— such as climbing suckers, which require all feet, or a speed suspension, which requires all legs—the augmentation’s systems entry indicates that requirement. The augmentation’s description will also indicate whether a limb-based upgrade requires the replacement of a limb or the augmentation of an existing limb. In the case of augmentations that specifically replace a lost limb, such as a polyhand or a prosthetic limb, you cannot attach such an augmentation to an existing limb, due to the way these upgrades are manufactured.

Common Systems: Although exceptions do exist, most augmentations require installation into one of the following body systems: arm (or all arms), brain, ears, eyes, foot (or all feet), hand (or all hands), heart, leg (or all legs), lungs, spinal column, skin, and throat.

Implantation

Getting an augmentation installed requires the services of a professional cybernetic surgeon or someone with ranks in Medicine equal to the level of the augmentation. A session with a cybernetic surgeon usually takes 1 hour per level of the augmentation. The price of such implantation procedures is included in the prices listed for each augmentation.

Removing Augmentations

You might want to have an augmentation removed, usually because you want to install a different one in the same system of your body. This removal usually occurs during surgery to install new cybernetics. Biotech usually kills off the old augmentation while it’s integrating with your body, allowing you to purge the dead biotech naturally. Because augmentations are coded to your body, it’s not possible to resell an old augmentation, nor can you reimplant one into a different person. The price of a new augmentation includes the price and time to remove the old augmentation.

Activation

Most augmentations work continuously. Those requiring some degree of control are plugged into your nervous system, and you can turn them on or off as a standard action unless otherwise noted. For example, you could activate or deactivate cybernetics in your eyes to observe different visual phenomena.

Table: Cybernetics

Cybernetics

Cybernetic augmentations use machines and circuitry integrated with the flesh and bone of the recipient. In most cases, cybernetics must be installed into the body by a trained surgeon—a process that takes 1 hour per level of the augmentation and the price of which is covered in the price of the cybernetic. Cybernetics are more than just machine implants: they are complex meldings of technology and the living host’s own organs. This allows them to be hardened against assaults that affect other technologies in ways robots and other entirely technological creatures can’t. Cybernetics are not subject to any effect or attack that targets technology unless it specifies that it affects cybernetics.

Cardiac Accelerator

• System: Heart
• Price: 3,850
• Level: 6

This implant plugs directly into your heart and can be triggered to overclock the performance of your heart and circulatory system. When you run, charge, or take a move action to move, you can spend 1 Resolve Point to increase your speed (in the relevant mode of movement) by 20 feet for that action. This extra movement is treated as an enhancement bonus.

Alternatively, you can spend 1 Resolve Point as a reaction when you attempt a Reflex saving throw to gain a +1 enhancement bonus to your roll.

Cybernetic Arm

• System: Spinal column

Made of ultralight materials, this fully cybernetic arm fuses to your spinal column, exoskeleton, or equivalent body structure and functions as a full arm. You can hold an additional hand’s worth of equipment. This lets you have more items at the ready, but it doesn’t increase the number of attacks you can make in combat. You must have a Strength score of 12 to use a cybernetic arm effectively.

Dual cybernetic arms consist of a pair of arms, one on each side of your body, and let you hold two additional hands’ worth of equipment. You need a Strength score of 14 to use dual cybernetic arms effectively.

Darkvision Capacitors

• System: Eyes

These replacement eyes allow you to see in total darkness, giving you darkvision with a range of 60 feet. They operate by sending out low-powered ultraviolet lasers that are then detected by receptors within the capacitors. When your capacitors are in operation, their lasers can be detected by creatures that have darkvision capacitors or can otherwise see ultraviolet light.

Advanced darkvision capacitors have the benefits of a wide- spectrum ocular implant (see page 211). Long-range darkvision capacitors function like advanced capacitors but provide a darkvision range of 120 feet.

Datajack

• System: Brain

This cybernetic includes a programmable data port that allows you to access different types of computers and digital storage media. Any handheld computer can be inserted directly into the port, while larger systems need to be connected by an adapter cable. Having the system connected directly to your nervous system obviates the need for an interface to access data on a system. Actually operating the system requires you to use the Computers skill as usual. Some closed systems don’t allow data access or require you to do some rewiring to connect with a datajack (usually an Engineering check).

Advanced datajacks make it easier to process and send information through the datajack. With a high-density datajack, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Computer checks when accessing a system via your datajack. An accelerated datajack instead provides a +2 bonus.

Dermal Plating

• System: Skin

You line your skin with hardened composite plates that deflect physical attacks. You gain an amount of damage reduction that depends on the model of your dermal plating. If you have natural damage reduction equal to or greater than your dermal plating, adding dermal plating increases the value of your natural DR by 1. If you have natural DR of a value less than your dermal plating, the value of DR from your dermal plating increases by 1.

Hideaway Limb

• System: Arm or Leg

This compartment is hidden inside one of your limbs. You can conceal items inside and protect them with a simple passcode. The compartment can hold items of negligible bulk and items of light bulk that are either relatively small or can be folded or contracted to fit. A hideaway in a leg (in a human) can hold more than one in an arm, and the creature’s size also adjusts the capacity. The GM decides what can fit.

When the compartment is closed, the seam in your flesh is difficult to detect. You gain a +2 bonus to Sleight of Hand checks to conceal items in a hideaway limb. Though this compartment can usually foil a simple pat down, most security checkpoints include a scan that can detect such devices. Retrieving an item from a hideaway limb is a move action instead of a standard action.

This type of augmentation is for Small and Medium creatures only. Hideaway limbs for creatures larger than Medium typically cost more but can hold items of greater size or bulk.

If you have a quickdraw hideaway limb, the compartment is integrated with a specific weapon. This allows you to draw the weapon as a swift action or as part of making an attack or full attack (similar to using the Quick Draw feat). A quickdraw hideaway limb works only if the limb is one you can normally aim and attack with, typically an arm. You can’t, for example, put a quickdraw hideaway limb in your leg and have the weapon spring into your hand.

You can have a mount installed in a quickdraw limb that holds the weapon in place while you shoot. You still can’t use your hand for other purposes, but you gain a +2 bonus to KAC against disarm attempts. The mount can’t hold a weapon that requires more than one hand to operate. You can’t hide other objects inside a quickdraw hideaway limb—there’s room for only the weapon.

Nothing stored in a hideaway limb is considered part of the cybernetic, and the stored item does not gain the cybernetic’s immunity to attacks affecting technological devices.

Polyhand

• System: Hand
• Price: 71,000
• Level: 14

You replace your entire hand with a hand made of reprogrammable microscopic adamantine prisms. With either a mental command or a programmable interface built into the hand, you can reconfigure your hand into the shape of various tools. The hand can contain programming for nine different tools, in addition to a configuration for a normal hand for your species. As a move action, you can switch the setting, causing the adamantine pieces to realign into the shape of the chosen tool. The tool has all the flexibility of the normal tool (or of a hand, if set to that).

Programming a new tool into the polyhand takes 10 minutes, and you must choose either to fill an empty slot or to replace a programmed tool. The tool replicated must be 8th level or lower. The polyhand can replicate the moving parts of a tool, but you must supply any fuel or batteries needed for the tool to function. The tool cannot produce substances, and since it’s not very conductive (important so as to avoid shocking the user), it can’t serve as a power conduit or data transmission line. The GM has final say in deciding which tools you can duplicate. The tools within engineering kits and similar kits can be duplicated, subject to the restrictions above.

You can’t replace the hand setting based on your biology, which is required for the polyhand to function properly. You can add a hand corresponding to another species in any slot that isn’t reserved; for instance, a human could program her polyhand to replicate a shirren hand. This can’t duplicate features of a unique individual, such as thumbprints. You can install a polyhand into a prosthetic limb that replaces an arm as if the prosthetic were a natural arm.

The adamantine construction makes the polyhand extremely durable (see page 408 in Chapter 11 for more information about adamantine). This doesn’t change the amount of unarmed strike damage, no matter the form your polyhand is in. The polyhand can’t maintain structural integrity if extended too far, so it can’t assume a form more than one and a half feet long in any dimension. Consequently, it can’t extend your reach.

Prosthetic Limb

• System: Arm and hand, or leg and foot

This prosthesis replaces a missing limb. It restores functionality, but it is no more durable than and doesn’t otherwise function differently than a normal limb for your species. A prosthetic limb can replace one you’ve lost, or you can have a limb removed in order to replace it with a prosthetic.

A storage prosthetic limb has a built-in concealed storage compartment, which functions as a hideaway limb (see above).

Respiration Compounder

• System: Lungs
• Price: 250
• Level: 1

A respiration compounder consists of a series of modules that attach to your lungs, letting you survive longer without having to breathe. Treat your Constitution score as though it were doubled for the purpose of how long you can hold your breath. You also gain a +4 bonus to Constitution checks to continue holding your breath. This doesn’t protect you from other dangers of an airless environment.

The compounder also filters your air, granting a +2 bonus to saving throws against inhaled poisons or other airborne toxins.

Retinal Reflectors

• System: Eyes
• Price: 1,350
• Level: 3

These sheets of reflective material can be implanted behind the retina, granting you low-light vision and a +1 enhancement bonus to vision-based Perception checks.

Speed Suspension

• System: All legs

You increase your land speed by replacing joints and tendons in your legs with high-performance cybernetics. A minimal speed suspension replaces only a few parts, increasing your land speed by 10 feet. A standard suspension is more invasive and increases your land speed by 20 feet. Replacing all your leg joints and tendons with a complete speed suspension increases your land speed by 30 feet. You can install a speed suspension into prosthetic legs. Extra speed from these augmentations is treated as an enhancement bonus.

Vocal Modulator

• System: Throat
• Price: 125
• Level: 1

A vocal modulator includes a series of miniature actuators built specifically to reshape your voice box, along with miniature hyper-resonant chambers that dynamically close or open. This allows you to change the pitch, timbre, and tone of your voice. You can more easily imitate accents or pronounce alien languages. When using Disguise to change your appearance, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus if the change in your voice also helps your disguise (at the GM’s discretion).

Wide-Spectrum Ocular Implant

• System: Eyes
• Price: 2,825
• Level: 5

These cybernetic spheres replace your eyes entirely. You gain low-light vision, as well as the ability to see infrared and ultraviolet light. These enhancements grant you a +2 bonus to vision-based Perception checks and allow you to notice some things people who can see only the red-violet light spectrum can’t, including the lasers from darkvision capacitors. This doesn’t grant you darkvision, but in darkness you can see significant sources of heat due to your infrared vision.